


The Pardoner's Song

by ExpatGirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, Castiel's True Form, Episode Fix-it, Gen, Hugs, Light Angst, Mark of Cain, Season/Series 10, Team Free Will, Trueform Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 02:55:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3712168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a coda to 10x14 <i>The Executioner's Song</i>. I, like many people, had a hard time understanding exactly what Dean's expression meant as he walked past Cas and towards his room, so I took that as my starting point and expanded on it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pardoner's Song

**Author's Note:**

> **  
> **  
> _Notes:_  
>   
> 
>  
> 
> _For Mo._
> 
>  
> 
> _You can read it as pre- or implied Destiel if you want (personally, I do, but hey, Dead Author and all that)._
> 
>  
> 
> _If you catch any typos, let me know so I can fix them!_

Something about the weight of Dean’s hand on his shoulder had felt _wrong_. Dean meant it to be amiable, he was sure, and yet it jolted him like a sucker punch. He couldn’t see Dean’s face but the set of his shoulders had seemed wrong, too, almost as though Dean were snarling, or crying, or, even, perhaps, rolling his eyes as he walked past. It didn’t make sense; the familiarity of the gesture was at odds with the strangeness of the emotion.

It had been a long night. It had taken Castiel hours to hide the First Blade, if only temporarily. It had been unpleasant, bloody, desperate work ( _wasn’t it always?_ ) and it wasn’t over yet ( _was it ever?_ ). He knew, in what passed for his heart, that coming back here had been self-indulgent, foolish, but he couldn’t talk himself out of it. And now, here he was. The wake of Dean’s departure reverberated through his borrowed bones.

Castiel understood, from millennia of experience with rituals, that speaking words gave them power, made them real. He wished, in what passed for his heart, that _this_ was not real; he longed to hide from it. But he was a solider first, with a soldier’s need to meet the enemy head-on. So he asked:

“How is he?”

This was directed at the solid bulk of Sam’s back— tonight, neither man could look Castiel in the eye, it seemed.

“Cas, Dean’s in trouble.”

There. The words existed now, in the open air, rather than in the clammy recesses of unspoken space. He could practically feel them pressing at him from all sides. They were terrible, but they were concrete and real. They could be grasped, they could be used, they were something towards which, arrow-like, he could aim himself.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know what to do for him.”

“I know. We’ll think of something, Sam. We always do.” A muscle in Sam’s back twitched at this, but it seemed as though he had run out of things to say.

Castiel found himself walking down the long, empty hallway to Dean’s room, not entirely sure how it had happened. Another instance of self-indulgent foolishness.

A protracted silence answered his knock. He was just about to turn around, to climb back in his car and leave the bunker, the state, the planet, when he finally heard a scuffle of movement and a quiet “Yeah?”.

Castiel opened the door, taking in at once the disheveled state of both the bedroom and its occupant, despite the near-perfect dark. Dean hadn’t even bothered to put his dirty clothes where they normally went. They were piled on the floor next to his bed, like the bloody skin of a dead animal. He could see Dean sit up partway, bracing on his elbows and blinking dully as he considered Castiel’s silhouette in the doorframe. It was bad luck to linger in liminal spaces, Castiel knew—humans had long grasped the danger of passing over a threshold; they had held countless superstitions about it throughout history. The danger in all rituals lay less in the outcome and more in the act, between the inhale and the exhale, the desire and the spasm.

Castiel stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

“I’m surprised you didn’t just break it down. I mean, I took longer than 2 seconds to answer.”

He ignored this jibe, as he did with most others. “I thought you might be asleep.”

He heard Dean laugh at that, and saw that the laugh didn’t reach his eyes. “You can turn the light on or something, if you want.”

“I don’t need it. Do you want me to?” _I can find you in any darkness, anywhere. Don’t you understand that?_

“No.” Here Dean collapsed back down, staring blankly at the ceiling. He rubbed his forehead. “My eyes—well, my head’s killing me.” His face went through a series of small but complicated expressions, which Castiel could not quite follow, before he turned his eyes back to the direction of the door. “At least come over here and stop looming in the dark, man. Hunters don’t particularly like that kind of thing, y'know. You could be mistaken for a monster at this distance.”

“Technically, I am a monster.” Castiel said, picking his way carefully amongst the discarded books and clothes. “Just not one that you feel compelled to kill.” He stood now at the side of the bed, but Dean still stared implacably at the ceiling.

Dean’s face underwent another bewildering set of expressions, and his Adam’s apple jumped as he swallowed. “Don’t _say_ that. That’s—that’s not what I meant.”

“I know. Sorry.” The room grew quiet, and the quiet stretched out, solidified into another kind of threshold. _The danger in all rituals is less in the outcome and more in the act_.

Castiel sat down on the edge of the bed, considering Dean’s profile. He could see the muscles working minutely as Dean clenched and unclenched his jaw, a habitual motion that had only gotten worse in the years Castiel had known him. He reached across, before he could think the better of it, and lightly pressed his fingertips to Dean’s forehead. He soothed the snarl of nerves that throbbed just under the surface and knew that, as he did it, his eyes flickered faintly—blue-white, the color of the hottest part of a flame.

Dean gave a little jolt, his gaze flicking towards Castiel for a moment, then away.”Thanks.” he said, as though his mouth was having difficulty forming words. That wasn’t what he first meant to say, Castiel realized, but could not guess what the original thought might have been. They held there, in a strange tableau. Dean was flat on his back, fully-clothed but uncovered, coiled in on himself tightly. His limbs were as straight and stiff as a man in a coffin. Castiel sat next to him, his body half-turned, his hand half-raised from Dean’s head, halfway between advance and retreat: a study of almost.

_What good are you to anyone? A half-angel who stumbles at the threshold? Don’t you know the danger of lingering in liminal space, you fool?_

He slid his shoes off and pivoted his body onto the bed. He stretched his legs out in front of him, pushing himself back until he sat, straight and tall, against the headboard.

“Cas? What are you doing?” Dean didn’t sound alarmed, but he did sound puzzled.

“I’m sitting with you.”

“Yeah, obviously, but I mean—you don’t need to do that. I don’t need a babysitter.” Dean shifted around until he could look at Castiel’s face, or, rather, the space where his voice was coming from. Castiel knew that he was simply a warm, slightly darker shape against the larger darkness of the room.

“I’ve never thought you did. But you do need sleep. And I...I do not feel like driving any more at the moment. I thought I’d make myself useful, at least.”

He expected an argument or a sarcastic remark—this was Dean Winchester, after all—or a begrudging nod of the head before being faced with the outline of Dean’s back. He did not expect what actually happened: a sigh, a moment’s pause, and then the warmth of a human body against his own, as Dean uncoiled, and became a living person once more.

Castiel found himself pulling Dean closer, every protective angelic instinct firing to life in him in an instant. He felt his true form shift from the weight of Dean’s soul even as the vessel rearranged itself under the physical weight of his body. This was as surprising as it was painful. He had made a habit of shutting out the awareness of his true form beyond the most basic sensory needs, but he felt it all at once, all of it, from the silver glint of the Enochian battle sigils at the base of his wings to the white-hot quasar pulse of what passed for his heart, deep at the center of him. He felt the raw red edge where his wings had been wrenched away and felt his true form flex instinctively to try and cover Dean with all six of them (modesty be damned). This caused a world-ending ripple of pain through him.

In the dark bedroom, his hand twitched.

He turned his true form’s faces toward the light of Dean’s soul. Or three of them, anyway. The lion’s head had roared and foamed when Metatron cut out his grace. And then, when the Scribe had announced Dean’s death, it had closed its eyes with a whimper, never, never to open them again.

Briefly, Castiel wondered if restoring his own grace would resurrect this part of himself; but the odds were so vanishingly small that there was no point in hoping. He would be dead soon anyway. What difference did this smaller death make?

The other three faces held Dean’s soul relentlessly in their sights, and in the dark bedroom, Castiel looked silently down at Dean.

Here Dean sighed again, and—Castiel could scarcely believe it—pressed tighter against him, hooking one arm around his waist and ( _Oh, God!_ ) placing his head in Castiel’s lap.

It struck Castiel suddenly that he now had the greatest hunter in the known world under his hands. A man who had made it his life’s work to hunt things like him. A man who had asked a monster to kill him and now curled up, childlike and small, in that same monster’s lap.

_You, who are all things to me, how could you even make that request? How could you ask me to make that sacrifice? Not even my Father was that cruel._

_And why can’t I be angry at you?_

As if he had heard, Dean whispered “I’m sorry”. It was barely audible. He did not specify for what, but he sounded very close to tears.

Castiel found that he had begun stroking Dean’s hair, silently, absently. He stopped his hand and rested it against the vulnerable curve at the back of Dean’s neck.

“It’s alright, Dean. Just go to sleep. I’ll watch over you.” He had meant it to lighten the mood, to call up the last time he’d made that offer (to Dean’s consternation), but instead Dean just shifted himself closer and nodded against the solid plane of Castiel’s thigh.

Dimly, Castiel wished that he could vacate this vessel, if only for a few moments, and unfurl his true form. He imagined himself, whole and fearsome and strong. He imagined keeping watch over the bunker, with all four faces bright-eyed and terrible, with a roar that could shake loose the pillars of the world, just so that the two boys inside these walls could get one night of sleep. Just so the one impossible boy under his hand could catch his breath and rest.

But there was one thing he could do here, now. In the dark bedroom, Castiel wrapped his arms—only human, but warm and solid and real—around Dean’s sleeping shoulder, and ran his fingers through Dean’s hair and for a moment he felt, in what passed for his heart, content.

  
  


 


End file.
